- Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 01:51:30 +0200
- From: "Andrew McLaughlin" <mclaughlin@pobox.com>
- Subject: ICANN Press Communiqué on Berlin Meeting Results
TWO ICANN SUPPORTING ORGANISATIONS CREATED; OPERATIONAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED
AT BERLIN MEETING OF ICANN INITIAL BOARD
BERLIN, THURSDAY 27th MAY - At a meeting today in Berlin, the Initial Board
of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) called
its Domain Names Supporting Organisation into being, accepted an application
to establish a Protocol Supporting Organisation, considered how to handle
some of the intellectual property issues relating to the Internet's Domain
Name system, reaffirmed its intention to create a system that will permit
individuals to select At-Large Directors as soon as possible and adopted
several other operational resolutions.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee the Internet's core
technical management functions. By September 2000, ICANN will have taken
over responsibility for coordinating the management of the Domain Name
system, the allocation of IP address spaces, the coordination of the
adoption of new Internet protocol parameters, and the management of the
Internet's root server system.
A global agreement on managing these functions is crucial to the Internet,
the network that connects millions of different computers and the people who
use them. ICANN is still in its formative stages. Its Initial Board's
primary task is to complete the organisation of a system of checks and
balances to ensure that the Internet's infrastructure is managed to meet the
legitimate needs all parties interested in its development.
ICANN made great progress in this direction during a series of meetings in
Berlin from 25th to 27th May. These meetings included the Government
Advisory Committee meeting (which issued its own communiqué), the Membership
Advisory Committee meeting (whose task is to make recommendations to the
Board on the creation of a representative, global and democratic membership
system), and constitutive meetings of ICANN's Domain Names Supporting
Organisation (more information on these meetings, including in some cases an
audio and a video record, are available on the ICANN web site at
www.icann.org). They culminated in the Initial Board meeting on 27th May.
The first significant decision the Initial Board took today was the
provisional recognition of six self-organised Constituency Organisations
representing parties interested in the management of the Domain Name System
from six different perspectives. The constituencies, which will elect the
Names Council to act as the governing body of the Domain Name Supporting
Organisation (DNSO), are the core of the DNSO. The DNSO is one of the three
supporting organisations required by ICANN's bylaws (the others are the
Address SO and the Protocol SO).
Like its two siblings, the PSO and the ASO, the DNSO will eventually elect
three of the 19 Directors who will constitute ICANN's full Board. The DNSO
will also prepare recommendations to the Initial Board regarding ICANN's
policy oversight of the Internet's Domain Name System (which translates the
Internet's numerical addresses into things humans can understand, like
www.icann.org). The issues it will eventually be grappling with include the
establishment of dispute settlement mechanisms, reconciling the conflicting
interests of various Domain Name holders, and whether, how and when to
expand the number of top-level domains (such as .com).
The six recognised constituency organisations represent:
* the registries for country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs, such as
.de, .uk or .jp)
* commercial and business entities
* the registries for generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs - such as .com,
.org and .net)
* intellectual property interests
* Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other providers of Internet
connectivity, and
* registrars (the companies that register the names under which
individuals or corporations wish to be known on the Web, such as
www.greeneurope.org or www.ibm.com)
The Initial Board deferred the recognition of the seventh constituency,
designed to represent non-commercial Domain Name holders. "Their proposal
was not yet mature enough," Dyson said. "The Initial Board asked the groups
wishing to set it up to collaborate on a new proposal for us to consider
next month."
The Initial Board further asked that the gTLD constituency, which currently
has only one member (Network Solutions Inc.), nominate only one member to
the Names Council (rather than the three provided in the bylaws for each
constituency group).
Organising meetings for all seven would-be constituencies were held on the
morning of 25 May. A provisional DNSO General Assembly which met thereafter
heard their reports and began a fruitful discussion on some of the
substantive issues referred to above. Dennis Jennings, the Chairman of CENTR
(the Council of European Top-level Domain Name Registries), was appointed
acting Chairman of the DNSO General Assembly by public acclamation. He said,
"I am delighted with the speed with which the Initial Board recognised the
six constituency groups. The Initial Board's decision to create a
provisional Names Council finely balances due process with the need to start
substantive work. Just as importantly, it accurately reflects the tenor of
the public discussions of the past two days."
The constitutive work for a second Supporting Organisation, the Protocol
Supporting Organisation, was also sufficiently advanced to be accepted by
the Initial Board, which consequently passed a resolution welcoming the
PSO's formation and asked its prospective members (Internet standards
development organisations such as the IETF, the World Wide Web Consortium,
the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the
International Telecommunications Union) to prepare a Memorandum of
Understanding formalising the PSO's status. It is hoped that this memorandum
will be ready by the time of the IETF's meeting in Oslo in July.
Two of ICANN's three Supporting Organisations have thus been called into
being through today's meeting of the Initial Board. This leaves the Address
Supporting Organisation as the last one to be created. "I have high hopes
that we will be able to accept the efforts of the groups seeking to
constitute an ASO by the time of our next open meeting in Santiago," said
Esther Dyson, ICANN's Interim Chairman.
The Initial Board also considered a report of the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) on Domain Name policy commissioned by the
United States Government in the same white paper that launched the process
of setting up ICANN. WIPO was asked to consider the intellectual property
issues posed by the first-come, first-served system by which Domain Names
have traditionally been allocated in the Internet. While designed to enable
users to reach Internet resources easily, Domain Names have acquired a
further significance as business identifiers and as such have come into
conflict with the system of trademarks that exists in the off-line world.
Among others, the Initial Board considered a number of issues dealt with in
the WIPO report: how the contact details of Domain Name holders should be
treated and payments collected by registrars, payment procedures, dispute
settlement mechanisms, the policy on "famous names" and potential new gTLDs.
The Initial Board noted that the report's suggestions concerning customer
payments and the way registrars should treat the contact details of Domain
Name holders are "closely similar" to what ICANN requires in its
accreditation agreement with its accredited registrars, and that it has
already scheduled a review of those issues early next year.
The Initial Board noted that a uniform dispute settlement mechanism was a
necessary element of a competitive registrar system. The Initial Board noted
that the scope of this policy should be wider than the cases of abusive
registration with which the WIPO report deals, and ultimately cover all
commercial dispute issues linked to Domain Name registrations. To this end,
ICANN-accredited registrars are being encouraged to develop and voluntarily
adopt a model dispute resolution policy while the DNSO has been asked to
consider the relevant chapter of the WIPO report, chapter 3, by 31st July,
in time for public comment before the Initial Board's next meeting on 26th
August.
The Initial Board also referred two other important issues, how to treat
"famous names" and whether, how and when to introduce new gTLDs, to the
newly formed DNSO for analysis and recommendations.
One of the most complex tasks ICANN faces is creating a workable mechanism
to ensure that individual users of the Internet can participate in the
election of nine of ICANN's nineteen directors. As the Membership Advisory
Committee, which met on 25th May, made clear in its commentary, the
logistical, administrative and financial challenges posed are enormous.
Given ICANN's principal responsibility - first and foremost to preserve the
operational stability of the Internet - the Initial Board is approaching
this issue with the utmost caution. The Initial Board asked its staff and
legal counsel to report to it before its next meeting on the administrative,
legal and financial issues thrown up by this challenge.
The Initial Board also passed several other resolutions dealing with
operational matters. These included its budget (a global envelope of USD 5.9
million was approved for the fiscal year starting on 1 July 1999), and a
resolution through which the Initial Board accepted the principles set forth
by its Advisory Committee on Independent Review. The Advisory Committee
recommended that ICANN set up an Independent Review Board empowered to
consider complaints that decisions by the ICANN Board violate of ICANN's
bylaws. Details remain to be worked out and the Advisory Committee on
Independent Review has been asked to complete a final report for the Initial
Board's consideration by 10th August.
Background
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee a select number of
the Internet's core technical management functions. Between now and
September 2000, ICANN is gradually taking over responsibility for
co-ordinating Domain Name system management, IP address space allocation,
protocol parameter assignment co-ordination, and root server system
management.
Contacts
If you have questions, please contact:
United States
Pamela Brewster
Director - Tech Policy Communications
Alexander Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
(+1-415) 923 1660, ext. 119
pbrewster@alexanderogilvy.com
Europe
Patrick Worms and Rick Flint
Ogilvy PR Worldwide – Brussels
(+32-2) 545 6609 or 6602
patrick.worms@ogilvy.be
rick.flint@ogilvy.be